Soaking wet Goodwood Revival.

This years Goodwood Revival was again on the weekend of September 17th, 18th and for the most of the weekend the weather was dry and warm.

We arrived Thursday lunch time, unloaded the car and set up our camp. The car was scruteneered on the Thursday and the Drivers, Tom Alexander and Christian Horner were also required to ‘sign on’.

Qualifying was set into two 25 minute sessions, one on the Friday and one on the Saturday. The fastest time of either of these sessions would determine grid position. The 1 hour race was scheduled for 2 o’clock Sunday afternoon.

Qualifying

Tom drove the full 25mins of the 1st session as Christian was not arriving until the Saturday. Tom made full use of the session re-acquainting himself with both the car and circuit. As his lap times got quicker the session was red flagged after only 20 minutes had passed due to an accident.

During Saturday’s session that Christian started, our fastest lap was recorded. A time of 1.34.3 was sufficient for P26 for this multi million pound grid.

Race

Due to weather conditions the race had to be put back to 3pm. As the drivers emerged from the ‘Drivers Briefing’ we were informed that the race had been shortened to 45 minutes. The pit window was from 15-30 minutes. We had already decided that Tom would drive first handing the car over to Christian as soon as possible. Normally the ‘celebrity’ driver was supposed to start the race but as we had had success in 2010 with this driver order, we decided to repeat this.

The race started on a damp, greasy track which was extremely difficult running on the period ‘L’ section tyres. Despite this Tom managed to take advantage of these conditions and overtake 3 cars on the opening lap. As the track dried Tom got quicker and quicker, maintaining his position in the race and was reeling in the other db4gt’s that were just ahead. On lap 8 he pitted. Being the first car to pit, the pit-lane was empty which was a bonus as it is very narrow and difficult to find space if several cars are stopped in there.

The driver-change was quick although time was lost as Christian could not get it in gear. Immediately as he exited the pits the heavens opened and from then on the circuit became treacherous. This ruined the race as the drivers cautiously tried to keep the cars on the track and bring them to the end with no damage. It was more like a procession than a race, with visibility getting worse with the pouring rain and several cars windscreens steaming up the race was cut short 5 minutes from the end.